Development and evaluation of joint SEAPs

The action aims at developing a model of joint SEAPs elaboration in rural territories and towns. Capacity building activities will be established together with a mentoring and coaching approach to assist learning territories to develop their joint SEAPs. At the same time, the experienced territories will evaluate and revise their SEAPs in order to improve them.

Eventually, 5 joint territorial SEAPs (covering each at least 10 rural towns) will be developed, and 5 existing joint SEAPs (covering each at least 10 rural towns) will be evaluated and improved. The development and evaluation of SEAPs will follow the guidelines of the Covenant of Mayors. However, as the action aims at addressing the specificities of rural territories, complementary guidelines will be written to facilitate further commitment from this target group.

The following territories are involved in project activities together with partners:

Experienced territories

Learning territories

Kernland Waldviertel (Austria)

Province du Luxembourg (Belgium)

Communauté de communes du Val d'Ille (France)

MAS Mezilesí (Czech Republic)

Pays de l'Albigeois et des Bastides (France)

South Transdanubian region (Hungary)

Kooperationsraum Aller-Leine-Tal (Germany)

Bacau county (Romania)

Dumfries&Galloway council (Scotland)

Novo mesto (Slovenia)

Implementation of two actions within joint SEAPs

Each territory will start implementing at least 2 actions within the two years after the finalisation of the SEAP and during the framework of the project (these actions will not be financed by the IEE project budget). Project partners will support the territories in the choice of the most relevant actions, provide technical engineering support and analyse and select the best financing tools.

More precisely, the objectives are to:

identify suitable RES and energy efficiency projects that fit within the developed plans and form an integral part of joint SEAPs;

support the rural communities in assessing technical potential of key RES and energy efficiency projects across different sectors of the economy and prioritize them so as to achieve targets;

assess the feasibility of the potential investments and support the rural communities to appraise their CO2 reduction potential;

confirm interest and support of the rural authorities and other relevant stakeholders for the potential investments;

ensure the interest of prospective investors to implement and manage RES and EE systems on a sustainable basis.